BabyCenter phone messages help mothers make healthy choices

Daphne Metland

Posted: September 12, 2016

Knowledge saves lives. In many parts of the world, where health facilities are few and far between, there simply aren’t enough skilled staff to give mothers the care and information they so desperately need. This is where mobile messages can help: regular text messages, sent to mothers’ mobile phones, bring life-saving health information straight to the mother’s hand.

When governments and doctors think about sending messages to women, they think in terms of reminders and instructions. BabyCenter knows how to speak in a way that reaches out to mothers and creates an emotional bond with her. We also know how to answer the questions moms have about their babies’ health and what they can do to ensure their babies are developing well and stay well. Our challenge was figuring out how to get these messages into the hands of women around the world. In 2011, BabyCenter created seven sets of messages written for pregnant women, new mothers and other caregivers that could be easily translated and adapted for different cultures. That’s over 5,000 messages. The messages were offered through the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA), a public-private partnership co-founded by BabyCenter and dedicated to using mobile phones to improve maternal health in poorly resourced countries. They were offered free of charge to NGOs globally along with guidelines on how to change and adapt them for local conditions.

So far these messages have been translated into 24 languages and localized for 29 countries. They have reached more than 3 million mothers.

We recently carried out a survey among the NGOs who have been using the messages and the results have been impressive. More women are having antenatal care, more are giving birth with a trained birth attendant and more babies are being vaccinated. To pick just a few specific examples from our survey:

The Liga Inan mHealth program in Timor-Leste (south-east Asia), implemented by Health Alliance International and Catalpa International in partnership with the Timor-Leste Ministry of Health, reported that women getting the program messages were nearly twice as likely to deliver their babies in a health facility, and had seven times the odds of receiving a postnatal care visit within two days of birth. Often women in poor countries give birth at home without a skilled attendant and don’t receive timely postnatal care.

In Ghana, the VOTO Mobile program reported that the number of women who slept under a mosquito net doubled – vital for preventing malaria. About 75% of women had their babies vaccinated and over 89% regularly washed their hands before holding their babies. Handwashing seems easy to us, but if you have to fetch the water from a well and carry it home, it is much harder. Regular handwashing can cut cases of diarrhea in half. In poor countries diarrhoeal disease is the second leading cause of death in children under five years old. So a simple behaviour change like handwashing can save lives.

Half of the women here understood the signs that meant a baby was ill, and 74% of women who thought the baby was unwell took them to a hospital or clinic. For us, a doctor is just a phone call away. In many of these countries, clinics and doctors are few and far between and transport may not be available. So a mother may have to carry her baby and walk hours to get to a clinic. She may have other children to care for as well, so the decision to go to the clinic is a difficult one. Often people wait until a child is very sick before heading for the clinic, which may be too late. Knowing the signs to look for and having a message that tells them when to go to the clinic is an important way of making sure unwell babies are taken to the clinic promptly.

In a UNICEF project in Nicaragua, mothers said that they have learned important issues about pregnancy and how to feed and take care of their baby. Interestingly men were more involved in the care of their wives and more aware of the importance of breastfeeding for the health of their baby.

Every mother wants what is best for her baby but many mothers struggle to know what makes a difference to their baby’s health. These simple messages empower mothers to make wise health choices for their family.

Daphne Metland is Editorial Director, International, Maternal and Child Health for BabyCenter. An experienced medical journalist, Daphne is a member of the Royal Society of Medicine in London and a member of the Association of Medical Journalists. In addition to being instrumental in the launch of BabyCenter web sites all over the world, Daphne is responsible for the company’s m-health Content Development Team and has created mobile phone messaging programs that are now in use in over 70 countries. Daphne has also created a series of 16 books on pregnancy and parenting for the National Childbirth Trust, journals for antenatal teachers, and videos on skills for labor, some of which have been highly commended by the British Medical Association in their annual Patient Information Awards. Before joining BabyCenter, Daphne worked as an antenatal teacher, preparing hundreds of couples for the arrival of their baby.

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